@shropshiregreenman
Retired manager, now seller of old stuff. Living in Shropshire with a Welsh dragon. Formerly Shropshire Green Man on Twitter. Once a Tory voter but never going back there. Now politically homeless but left leaning. Rejoin 🇪🇺 Nature🦋 Vegan-ish 🌿 WWFC ⚽️
Apparently, today is Blue Monday, the saddest and most depressing day of the year, so I'm sharing a picture of a pair of boobies to cheer everyone up, because who doesn't love boobies?
Guessing that it is symbolic, to show unity, rather than a serious show of force at this stage.
Wow...a £40m monument to promote Christianity. I wonder whst Jesus would have made of it? 🤔
news.sky.com/video/work-s...
A great graphic to demonstrate the potential rise of the Greens and demise of ReformUK as their bubble bursts and the gammons die off. I'm actually 70 and it can't happen soon enough for me!
Despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail, nobody needs to take a blind bit of notice of anything that Kemi Badenoch says, these days. She is a political irrelevance.
And yet he'll be elected with an even bigger majority next time!
“Reform UK…A party that promised to be ‘different’ seems instead to be collecting ex-Tories like Panini stickers, except instead of legends you’re mostly getting the ones that never made the starting team”
www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion...
My advice would to try your best with a plant based or vegan diet, but don't beat yourself up if you're not 100% successful straight away. Any degree of change away from meat and dairy has got to be a good thing!
Some dogs just appreciate the spirit of Christmas more than others...
Facebook, Instagram, X are simply banned in Russia. No US outrage about free speech there—yet the EU is the target. That contrast says a lot.
Very impressed with these miniature Christmas trees being sold on Tesco's fruit and veg department today. 😏
Merry Christmas everyone!
FINANCIAL TIMES I was amused - and saddened - to read the latest instalment of the Brexiters' excuses for the poor performance over recent years of the UK economy and the UK's politics. In "Implementation of Brexit became a business fiasco" (Markets Insight, December 19), Paul Marshall acknowledges the cost of the UK's decision to leave the EU. But rather than acknowledge that his analysis was wrong - cutting ties with your biggest trading partner is never a good idea - Marshall blames bad implementation, and the fact that the EU didn't cut the UK some slack.
Implementation of Brexit by the UK has indeed been poor, but that's a direct consequence of the political crisis that everyone should have expected following such a major decision on the back of one simple 52/48 referendum vote at the conclusion of a mind-bogglingly uninformed debate by both sides. That includes the Brexiters' naive insistence that the EU would bend to UK demands and grant it all sorts of privileges not enjoyed by others. So, the roughly 8 per cent of GDP loss in UK output since the Brexit decision in 2016 is easily explained by three perfectly predictable factors: it was a bad economic decision; it has split UK society politically; and the EU27 has moved on.
It's time for those who led the UK down this disastrous path to stand up and acknowledge their wrong analysis and naive understanding of Europe. Until that happens, how can one even hope that the UK will begin to heal? Erik Fossing Nielsen Senior Adviser, Independent Economics (a London-based economics advisory firm); Former Chief Economist, UniCredit, and Former Chief European Economist, Goldman Sachs, Berlin, Germany
Letter to the FT that stingingly sums up Brexit and the shit creek we now find ourselves in.
A terrible idea (naive, prejudiced and uninformed) that has deeply divided us and left us poorer and less secure… but unwilling to face up to the damage we’ve done to ourselves. While the EU moves on.
I'll just leave this here...
After a brief foray into using Threads, I've been watching it go the same way as the other platforms, with its level of algorithmic control, so I'm back here again!
Another concern, will there be a consequential increase in the number of appeals, which would defeat the objective of this move?
My concern would whether there would be an increase in appeals, which would defeat the object?
Hey Labour!
I wonder whether those consultants are ReformUK donors, by any chance? 🤔
Alternatve view is that she is trying to bridge the gap between decent people, genuinely concerned by increasing immigration, legal and otherwise, and those out and out racists doing the bidding of populist, fascist influences. I thought she was excellent today.
Donald Trump destroyed public service broadcasting in the US - it's little surprise Nigel Farage wants to do the same thing here.
Trump’s America, don’t let it become Farage’s Britain.
But how can you control prices in a free market economy, with multiple suppliers negotiating their own terms with the supermarkets, especially when manufacturers are at the mercy of fluctuating commodity prices?
Wow...Shabana Mahmood was very impressive this morning. Left that interview with Laura Kuenssberg in her pocket!
Don't blame the councils, blame years of government underfunding and soaring social care costs, much of it lost in profits to private providers. 😡
Don't suppose he needs to worry about awkward conversations with Trump if he ever becomes Prime Minister. (You wouldn't rule it out!) Trump will either be in jail or dead, whichever occurs first...
One thing I learned about them is that they have no budget for campaigning so it's not really surprising that we don't know what they stand for. I guess most people just vote for their preferred political party.
This is very good news. Can anybody even name theirs, which political party they represent and what they are supposed to do?
I thought not!
BBC News - Police and crime commissioners to be scrapped in England and Wales
www.bbc.com/news/article...
But what solutions are there to stop price gouging by private companies? Isn't that what competition is supposed to deal with? Or are we heading back to 1970s price controls?
Really? Is he liked by voters? Agree he's a good communicator but, personally, I find that he comes across as insincere. I'm not sure about his approach to privatisation in the NHS either. I just can't see him looking as easy on the world stage as Starmer does.